The integration of wireless communications, vehicle monitoring systems and location devices has made significant progress over the past few years in the rapidly growing field of Telematics. However, wireless telephones have not yet evolved to the point where multi-functional communications operate seamlessly. Currently, wireless telephones include a transceiver, a keypad, a microphone, speaker and sometimes a display. In normal operation, such a wireless telephone is capable of handling the user's communications needs. However, if the wireless telephone user is driving a car, or attempting to interface with a personal digital assistant (PDA), Tablet, or other personal computing device, the user must modify the telephone to include a headset, or other interface device, to facilitate communication.
Moreover, such a modified wireless telephone poorly supports burgeoning telematics applications and fails to support the integration of wireless communications with other applications. For example, the wireless telephone may not be used as a secure access device for unlocking an automobile. If the automobile has communications facilities integrated with an electronic door locking system, drivers who are locked out of their vehicles instead must call a third-party service to gain access to their vehicles. As another example, a standalone wireless telephone may not be used by a personal computing device to provide a wireless network connection to a remote computing device. Rather, the personal computing device may be equipped with a wireless communications capability such as Wi-Fi, or the wireless telephone may be adapted to connect to the personal computing device using a network interface.
What is needed is a way for transparently providing personal communications capabilities that may flexibly operate in the telematics space as well as other application environments. Any such system should allow seamless multi-functional wireless communications for different integrated applications desired by a user.